{"id":20502,"date":"2019-08-02T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=20502"},"modified":"2019-08-01T17:26:26","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T17:26:26","slug":"cancer-vixen-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2019\/08\/02\/cancer-vixen-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancer Vixen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Marisa Acocella Marchetto<\/strong> (Knopf Publishing\/Pantheon)
\nISBN: 978-0-30726-357-5 (US HB) 978-0-37571-474-0 (UK PB)<\/p>\n

The comics medium is incredibly powerful and versatile: easily able to convey different levels of information and shades of meaning in a variety of highly individualistic and personal manners and styles and on any subject imaginable.<\/p>\n

Although primarily used as a medium of entertainment, the sequential image is also a devastating tool for instruction and revelation as in this superb encapsulation of one woman’s knock-down drag-out tussle with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big C\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Born in1962, Marisa Acocella studied painting at the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City before becoming an Art Director for a major Madison Avenue ad agency. After a meteoric career in the field, in 1993 she turned to cartooning.<\/p>\n

Acocella concocted the quasi-autobiographical fashion cartoon She <\/em>which debuted in Mirabella Magazine<\/strong> before transferring to Elle<\/strong> in 1996. The feature was collected as Just Who the Hell Is She, Anyway? The Autobiography of She <\/strong>and the character was optioned for a show by HBO television.<\/p>\n

The frenetic scribbler was subsequently head-hunted by Robert Mankoff – Cartoon Editor for iconic periodical The New Yorker<\/strong> – and soon after, with her work regularly appearing in Glamour <\/strong>(where she crafted the series Glamour Girls<\/em>), Advertising Age<\/strong>, Talk<\/strong>, Modern Bride <\/strong>and ESPN magazine<\/strong>, she created ‘The Strip’<\/em> for the New York Times<\/strong> Sunday Styles section. It was that prestigious paper’s first ever continuing comics feature.<\/p>\n

In 2004, at the top of her game and three weeks before her marriage to a dashing and highly successful restaurateur, seemingly with the world at her stylishly shod feet (there’s a great deal of attention paid to women’s shoes here, but at least it’s an apparently hereditary fetish: Marisa’s simply overwhelming mother Violetta<\/em> Acocella<\/em> was a designer for the Delman Shoe Company), the artist noticed a lump in her breast\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

How the sometimes flighty, occasionally self-absorbed but ultimately tough and determinedly resolute Style-Zombie Fashionista cartoonist took control of her life and her situation to beat cancer makes for an utterly engrossing and ferociously vital read\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Told in overlapping flashbacks Cancer Vixen<\/strong> – because the artist loathed the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cancer Victim\u00e2\u20ac\u009d – documents her emotional pilgrimage through denial, oppressive terror, turbulent anticipations, financial heebie-jeebies, desperate metaphysical bargaining, exploration of outrageous alternative therapies, grudging acceptance and onerous fight-back through her interactions with friends and family – especially that formidably overbearing ‘(S)Mother’<\/em> and man-in-a-billion husband-to-be Silvano Marchetto<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

As Marisa reveals the day-by-day, moment-to-moment journey from suspicion to diagnosis, through surgery and the horrifying post-op chemo-therapy with profound passion, daunting honesty and beguiling self-deprecating humour, what strikes the reader most is the cruelly unnecessary extra anguish caused by a silly mistake which might have cost the artist her life\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Even though thoroughly in-touch, on the go and in command of her life, this modern Ms. had accidentally let her Health Insurance lapse\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Coming from a country where – despite the best efforts of our current government to gut and sell off the National Health Service and neuter the social support and benefits net – nobody has to die from insufficient funds or endure ill-health because of their bank balance, the most gob-smacking strand of this graphic reportage is the cost-counting exercise which periodically tots up the dollars spent at crucial stages of treatment and the realisation that many of her potential care-givers are actually bidding against each other rather than working together to treat their patients customers\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Thankfully Glamour<\/strong> magazine nobly commissioned Marisa to turn her regular strip into a cartoon account of her illness and recovery (with the strip Cancer Vixen<\/strong><\/em> launching as a 6-page strip in the April 2005 issue), whilst bravely marrying Silvano – in defiance of her very real dread that he might be a widower before their first anniversary – at least got Marisa belatedly onto his insurance policy\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

As a result of her experiences, Marisa Acocella-Marchetto apportioned a percentage of the book’s profits to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation<\/strong> and to underprivileged women at the St. Vincent’s Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center<\/strong> in Manhattan, where she also established The Cancer Vixen Fund, dedicated to help uninsured women get the best breast care available.<\/p>\n

Delivered in a chatty, snazzy blend of styles and bright, bold colours, this relentlessly factual book – and thus truly scary because of it – combines a gripping true report of terror and resilience with a glorious love story and inspiring celebration of family and friendship under the worst of all circumstances.<\/p>\n

Whilst not the escapist fantasy fiction which is our medium’s speciality, this human drama and faithfully impassioned but funny memoir – with a happy ending to boot – is the kind of comic to enthral and elate real-world fans and devotees of the medium; and indeed, everyone who reads it.
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2006 Marisa Acocella Marchetto. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Marisa Acocella Marchetto (Knopf Publishing\/Pantheon) ISBN: 978-0-30726-357-5 (US HB) 978-0-37571-474-0 (UK PB) The comics medium is incredibly powerful and versatile: easily able to convey different levels of information and shades of meaning in a variety of highly individualistic and personal manners and styles and on any subject imaginable. Although primarily used as a medium … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cancer Vixen”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-classics","category-graphic-autobiography"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-5kG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}